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Show DRY FARMING RULES Past Two Years in Texas Well Adapted as Test. greatest Trouble Seems to Be That Wind Blows In Spring Each Locality Lo-cality Must, to Large Extent, Work Out Own Problems'. We can better understand the prin-lples prin-lples of dry farming, if we consider .hat the soil is a huge sponge. It takes in water in proportion to its looseness and water is evaporated from it in the same way. A well-plowed well-plowed field takes up a great deal more water than a pasture, if the rain is of short duration. But the grass roots will hold water longer than, the plowed field, unless the field has been treated properly. A sponge, soaked in water anu hung in the open air, will dry out very quickly, but if a newspaper is tied round -he sponge the water in the sponge will remain there a long time! The underlying principle of dry farming is to put something over the land which will act as the newspaper does around the sponge, and still not interfere with the growing crops. It has been found that a shallow coat of finely pulverized, dry, soil will do the same work as the newspaper does. That is why one of the cardinal principles prin-ciples of dry farming is "cultivate constantly." Another principle is "plow deep before the rains come." The reason is easy to see. Deep plowing plow-ing loosens the tight soil and allows it to soak up more water. The past two years in Texas have been well adapted to testing dry farming farm-ing methods. Last winter, for instance, in-stance, we had good rains and they continued in many sections well up Into the spring. But the summer was dry and hot. On land that had been prepared by deep plowing for the winter win-ter rains, the moisture soaked in deep, and when that land was further fur-ther protected by constant cultivation cultiva-tion and the keeping of a dry blanket of fine dirt over it, crops sent their roots down into the moist soil underneath under-neath and produced yields in spite of the lack of rain. No hard and fast rules can be laid down for dry farming, any more than rules can be laid down which will apply ap-ply to any other kind of farming for all localities. Writing to the Dry Farming bulletin, bulle-tin, Anders L. Mordt of Guymon, Okla., Illustrates this as follows: There Is a Norwegian colony In Hanford county, Texas, brought in from the best settlements of the north and northwest. These men have adopted adopt-ed the dry farming methods as the only way to farm in this country, and they intend to keep this up regardless of rainy or droughty years. As a result, re-sult, if they have a rainy year, they can store away enough moisture to raise a crop that year and leave enough to supply a second year when they add the ordinary rainfall to the supply that they have stored away. The greatest trouble seems to be due to the fact that the wind blows in the spring. The farmers have learned that they cannot afford to work the dust blanket too fine as the wind in the spring season will carry inches of dirt away from one field over on another. If they leave the field too lumpy there will be too many cracks and the evaporation evap-oration will be too large. We must find a middle way. There is also a doubt as to whether or not deep plowing plow-ing is a good thing. Each locality must, to a large extent, solve its own .dry farming problems, but when we know that dry farming produces crops alongside fields that are barren when cultivated by other methods, we ought to be willing to make the necessary experiments in order to find out the best principles for our respective localities. The man who can help himself by dry farming and who will cling to other plans is standing in his own light. |